Fun With Curveballs

Science has long held that the curveball is basically an optical illusion. Here's an explanation.

Basically, they theorize that the sudden break of a curveball is caused by the ball leaving your peripheral vision and entering your normal vision. They use fancier words, but that's the gist of it. There are visual examples.

Day Baseball Open Thread

We're down 1-0 already, but Braun is giving it a go. Have at it.

If Anything Is Broken In Braun's Wrist...

I might just get a bag of balls, drive down to St. Louis, and start flinging them at Adam Wainwright in awkward social situations.

My No-Hitter.

I attended yesterday’s Brewer/Cardinal pitchers duel, and actually managed to see the functional equivalent of a no-hitter as Yovanni Gallardo and Chris Carpenter combined to record 27 outs without allowing a hit through 4.5 innings. It doesn’t count, but it’s still a rare feat.

Carpenter was truly outstanding. By the time Gallardo had thrown his 100th pitch, Carpenter was only at his 60th, and this was not due to careless hacking by the Brewers. Carpenter lived in the strike zone all day, and still, no one could touch him. It was an outstanding performance and I thought I had a real chance to see a perfect game until Counsell managed a seeing-eye single (and was promptly thrown out stealing as part of a botched hit-and-run).

Bill Hall was the unlikely hero, splitting the gap with an opposite field hit in the 10th. We should give credit where credit is due. Hall has been struggling mightily against righties and has just experienced a terrible road trip. He had a good approach in that at-bat and wisely went the other way in a situation where only a single was necessary.

At 2 hours and 26 minutes, this was by far the shortest extra-inning game I’ve ever seen. The crew did a good job to steal this one and to reclaim their division lead. Meanwhile, in Chicago, the Cubs lost their 8th consecutive game.

When Did The Twins Become Offensive Juggernauts?

The fuck? They've been scoring like mad, even though they only really have two good offensive players. This is very irritating.

Interleague Open Thread

Our long local nightmare is over. The evil reign of Bill Hall getting playing time against right handed pitchers seems to be over. Let us all be thankful that we came out of this i first, and hope that we are stronger for the experience.

2B Craig Counsell
SS JJ Hardy
LF Ryan Braun
1B Prince Fielder
CF Mike Cameron
RF Corey Hart
DH Mat Gamel
3B Casey McGehee
C Jason Kendall
LHP Manny Parra

F' the gophers!

they should pay ME...

...to watch jeff suppan pitch and bill hall hit with the bases loaded and one out against a right-handed pitcher, down 2.

i started to actually work out the win percentage and probability for every possible outcome if you let bill hall hit there or if you let... say... ANYONE ELSE bat, cuz i'm a dork, and i thought it would make me feel better to be right and have empirical evidence. but you know what? it didn't. cuz halfway through the calc, i realized that it's so damn obvious that you have less chance of winning the game with hall batting there, that everyone knows it. ryan braun knew it! you saw him rolling his eyes and shaking his head through the whole at-bat. ken macha knew it! but he made a promise. roy oswalt knew it! you could tell both by the shit-eating grin on his face and the second-to-last pitch under hall's chin that set up the low-and-away slider that was 80% likely to result in a strikeout and 20% likely to result in a double play. i knew it! because i was actively rooting for the strikeout. hell!!! bill hall knew it! which i'm assuming is why he was running very small laps behind the umpire between each pitch.

for what it's worth, (and please take both my angry-bias and 5 beers into account) i seriously believe the brewers decreased their win percentage by a double digit number with that decision. that wasn't malpractice. it wasn't even sabotage. it was murder. they murdered their chance of winning with that choice.

i'm so worked up over this development that i don't even care if they win the game. the decision was so inexplicably dumb, that anything that comes after it can't redeem it. it's like when your 14 year old daughter tells you she's pregnant with a drug dealer's baby, and then comes home 2 weeks later with straight a's on her report card. it just doesn't matter that much anymore.